RUTHFULLY YOURS

After two months of an onslaught by troops of the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy along with the Polish Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire under the command of King John Sobieski rose to defend Christianity at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna in September 1683. The battle marked the turning point in the 300 year Ottoman-Hapsburg wars with Christianity. In this instance Christianity prevailed on the European continent.

Three hundred and thirty years later Europe is once again being called on to defend its civilization against Muslims swarming into the continent at a record rate. This time two of Europe’s most affluent nations, Sweden and Germany have laid out the welcome mat. More than a million migrants will end up in Germany alone by the end of this year. But not everyone is so welcoming. The request for firearms in Europe has been overwhelming as people are seeking the means to defend themselves against rampaging and often criminal migrants. Self-defense – which for decades were words that connoted “out-of-control” – is now widely accepted. In Austria gun sales are at record levels.

ISIS trained jihadists, returning as European citizens are infiltrating the ranks of the migrants. They are the vanguard in this civilizational war. But resistance is building. Most Italians are opposed to new arrivals. The British passed Brexit in large part to oppose the EU mandated migrant quota. Swedes have observed baseball bat wielding teenagers beat up Muslims at the Stockholm train station. President Orban of Hungary foresees the “destruction of Europe” in this migration push and argues it is time to push back.

This, of course, is merely the thin edge of the wedge. From an electoral standpoint, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel was soundly defeated in local elections. Political change is just over the horizon in France, Spain, Austria and Italy. Every incidence of reported rape, beating, and honor killing generates thousands of voters for stability at any price.

A Turkish man kicked a woman in the face leaving her severely bruised because she was wearing shorts. But in this increasingly Islamicized nation, a court released the assailant saying that he hadn’t committed any crime.

After the New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne and 17 other cities, fears were heightened in every European capital. But Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne reserved most of his concern for the threats from right wing circles that were intent on retaliation. Other cardinals raised the specter of Islamophobia and the return of “new nationalism” – a euphemism for neo-Nazis. But what the Church could not do and has not done is condemn in unequivocal language the damage to European civilization of a borderless continent that has allowed the free flow of migrants from worn torn Syria. Clearly compassion has its place, but so too do the limits of compassion.

BODO, Norway—When the U.S. wants to learn what Russia is doing in the Arctic, it often turns to the Norwegian military, which has been conducting operations for decades from this Arctic town amid the fiords.

These days, it isn’t the volume of Russian military activity in the region that concerns Norway and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies. Adm. Haakon Bruun-Hanssen, Norway’s chief of defense, says Russian military activity in the Barents Sea has grown in recent years but still pales in comparison to Cold War levels.

What concerns him, he says, is the increased sophistication Norway is seeing in the far north, as the Kremlin modernizes its armed forces. NATO forces retain an upper hand in conventional equipment and prowess, he said, but Russia is catching up with new sensors, submarines and capabilities.

ENLARGE

“The equality between Russian military capability and Western military capability has started to come very close to each other, like it used to be in the Cold War,” Adm. Bruun-Hanssen said in an interview during a recent trip to Bodo by U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

While the number of Russian intercepts and operations is “far smaller” than during the Cold War, he said, “the difference is now we are talking about new types of platforms, new types of sensors, new types of weapons systems that are far more flexible and far more capable than we had during the Cold War.”

The buildup has served as a wake-up call to U.S. military officials, especially as diplomatic ties with Moscow fray over Syria, and to European countries such as Norway, which scaled back their defenses in the 1990s and early 2000s after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

NATO officials say they have been stepping up antisubmarine and other naval exercises as part of their efforts to deter Russian aggression, conducting an antisubmarine exercise this summer in the Norwegian sea with eight allies. CONTINUE AT SITE

Theresa May promised that “Brexit means Brexit” when she became Britain’s Prime Minister this summer, and she seems to have meant it. She said this weekend that by March she will formally begin negotiations with Brussels to leave the European Union, setting the stage for Brexit in 2019. Now Britain needs to live up to the other half of her famous dictum and “make a success of it.”

Doing that requires thinking big—much bigger than most British and European politicians are currently doing. London is consumed with debates about “hard Brexit” versus “soft Brexit,” meaning how much of its newfound independence Britain will surrender back to Brussels in exchange for how much access to the European market. The softees say Britain should preserve market access even at the cost of subjecting itself to most EU rules, as Norway and Switzerland do. The hard side says Britain should walk away from the EU so London can impose stringent immigration controls.

This debate is a trap. Attempts to cater to Brussels’s innate protectionism by bargaining Britain back into the unhappy circle will let the EU whittle away the advantages of Britain’s new freedom. But Britain also can’t afford to abandon Europe given the mutual economic ties that already exist.

Instead of hard or soft, Mrs. May and her colleagues should focus on creating a better Brexit to build a Greater Britain. That means radically expanding Britain’s trading relations abroad while boosting competitiveness at home. Thinking big this way would make the most of Britain’s new opportunity while helping Britain drive the right kind of exit with the EU.

Britain needn’t wait until it leaves the EU to start negotiating trade deals, and potential trade partners shouldn’t hold back either. Brussels insists Britain can’t open trade talks on its own while still formally an EU member. Plenty of London bureaucrats and lawyers may be tempted to agree. But why should Jean-Claude Juncker or Angela Merkel get a veto over Washington’s, Ottawa’s or Canberra’s ability to strike a trade deal with London?

Britain should aspire to have high-quality free-trade agreements in place with the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand from the first post-Brexit day in 2019. Their historical ties are close, and all four countries of the Anglosphere have attempted to negotiate trade deals with the EU. Countries such as South Korea that already have EU deals could conclude new bilateral deals quickly. British Trade Secretary Liam Fox said last week he is also open to trade deals with developing countries. Brazil, China, India, Nigeria and others can jump at that invitation after years of trade difficulties with the EU. CONTINUE AT SITE

The separatist leaders in Kashmir, as often happens with opponents (such as the Palestinians or Iran) seem to take any willingness to negotiate as sign of weakness, and start pursuing their own agendas with even more aggression.

Their agenda of the separatists has consistently been one of radical Islamist rule in Kashmir.

“They [the separatists] are not ready for it [a political solution]. They are not ready even to open their doors. They enjoy fuelling violence and getting innocents killed,” said Ram Madhav, General Secretary of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party.

The refusal of Kashmiri separatist leaders to meet an all-party Indian parliamentary delegation led by India’s Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, that visited Kashmir on September 4-5 to strike a political solution for the strife-torn state, was hardly surprising. The separatist leaders in Kashmir, as often happens with opponents (such as the Palestinians or Iran) seem to take any willingness to negotiate as sign of weakness, and start pursuing their own agendas with even more aggression.

“They [the separatists] are not ready for it [a political solution]. They are not ready even to open their doors. They enjoy fuelling violence and getting innocents killed,” said Ram Madhav, General Secretary of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party.

If New Delhi is serious about establishing peace in the Kashmir Valley, it is futile to waste any more time with separatist leaders belonging to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), a united front of 26 political, social and religious organizations all committed to the cause of Kashmiri independence from India. It would be naïve to entertain any hope of a positive response from them.

The history of the behaviour of APHC leaders and similar groups shows that they evidently have little interest in the values of peace, secularism and development, which are dear to India and all democratic societies. Their agenda has consistently been one of radical Islamist rule in Kashmir. Their approach during the current crisis there merely confirms this pattern. They continue to spread a message of hatred and violence against the Indian authorities by portraying them as “anti-people.”

These separatists are allegedly aligned with the establishment in Islamabad, Pakistan, to foment unrest in Kashmir. APHC leader Ali Shah Geelani holds an Indian passport, only to indulge in an anti-India rhetoric . On August 14, 2015, another separatist, Asiya Andrabi, hoisted the Pakistani flag in Jammu and Kashmir. Both Geelani and Andrabi addressed a Jama’at-ud-Da’wah rally in Pakistan, led by Hafiz Saeed, a co-founder of Lashkar-e-Toiba and chief of Jama’at-ud-Da’wah, which has had sanctions placed against it by the United Nations as a terrorist outfit promoting an anti-India agenda.

These leaders also seem to have financial interests in being close to Pakistan. Recently, the separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s son, Nayeem Geelani, has come to the attention of India’s National Intelligence Agency, for having transferred a large amount of money into the bank account of reported terrorist, Syed Salahuddin, based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Another country and another group of voters who sent the experts to that place that we can’t say in a family blog.

Let’s go to Colombia first:

A Colombian peace deal that the president and the country’s largest rebel group had signed just days before was defeated in a referendum on Sunday, leaving the fate of a 52-year war suddenly uncertain.

A narrow margin divided the yes-or-no vote, with 50.2 percent of Colombians rejecting the peace deal and 49.8 percent voting in favor, the government said.

The result was a deep embarrassment for President Juan Manuel Santos. Just last week, Mr. Santos had joined arms with leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, who apologized on national television during a signing ceremony.

The surprise surge by the “no” vote — nearly all major polls had indicated resounding approval — left the country in a dazed uncertainty not seen since Britain voted in June to leave the European Union. And it left the future of rebels who had planned to rejoin Colombia as civilians — indeed, the future of the war itself, which both sides had declared over — unknown.

Both sides vowed they would not go back to fighting.

So what happened in Colombia?

Let me introduce you to my good friend Daniel Duquenal who lives next door in Venezuela. I agree with him that President Santos, who was President Uribe’s defense minister, made a huge mistake in bringing Cuba (not an honest broker) into the middle of these negotiations:

Then came the choice of Havana and Castro’s guidance to negotiate with its allies, the communist FARC.

With the exception of the Vietnam War, America’s alliance system in East Asia has helped keep the peace for more than half a century.

Now it is in trouble. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s progression from abusive name-calling to a more broadly articulated anti-American hostility has been swift and stunning. It threatens one of Washington’s crucial Asian alliances and sets back U.S. President Barack Obama ’s signature “pivot” to the region.

China is jubilant over Mr. Duterte’s cooling relations with Washington after it clashed for years with the Philippine leader’s predecessor.

“The clouds are fading away,” China’s ambassador to Manila, Zhao Jianhua, said at a Chinese National Day reception. “The sun is rising over the horizon, and will shine beautifully on the new chapter of bilateral relations.”

At first it looked like a fit of pique: One month ago, Mr. Duterte called Mr. Obama a “son of a whore” over U.S. criticism of his war on drugs that has strewn the country with thousands of corpses. His rage quickly hardened.

A few days later Mr. Duterte proposed removing American military advisers from the troubled southern region of Mindanao. Then he declared he was shopping in China and Russia for military supplies readily available in the U.S. Mr. Duterte will lead a Philippine business delegation to Beijing this month.

The last group, defined as the “Ultras”, represent 28% of Muslims polled, and the most authoritarian profile. They say they prefer to live apart from Republican values. For them, Islamic values and Islamic law, or sharia, come first, before the common law of the Republic. They approve of polygamy and of wearing the niqab or the burqa.

“These 28% adhere to Islam in its most retrograde version, which has become for them a kind of identity. Islam is the mainstay of their revolt; and this revolt is embodied in an Islam of rupture, conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism,” according to Hamid el Karoui in an interview with Journal du Dimanche.

More importantly, these 28% exist predominantly among the young (50% are under 25). In other words, one out of every two young French Muslims is a Salafist of the most radical type, even if he does not belong to a mosque.

It is unbelievable that the only tools at our disposal are inadequate opinion polls. Without knowledge, no political action — or any other action — is possible. It is a situation that immeasurably benefits aggressive political Islamists.

Willful blindness is the mother of the civil war to come — unless the French people choose to submit to Islam without a fight.

Recently, two important studies about French Muslims were released in France. The first one, optimistically entitled, “A French Islam is Possible,” was published under the auspices of Institut Montaigne, an independent French think tank.

The second study, entitled, “Work, the Company and the Religious Question,” is the fourth annual joint study between the Randstad Institute (a recruiting company) and the Observatory of Religious Experience at Work (Observatoire du fait religieux en entreprise, OFRE), a research company.

Both studies, filling a huge knowledge-deficit on religious and ethnic demography, were widely reported in the media. France is a country well-equipped with demographers, scholars, professors and research institutes, but any official data or statistics based on race, origin or religion are prohibited by law.

France has 66.6 million inhabitants, according to a report dated January 1, 2016 from the National Institute of Statistics (Insee). But census questionnaires prohibit any question about race, origin or religion. So in France, it is impossible to know how many Muslims, black people, white people, Catholics, Arabs, Jews, etc. live in the country.

This prohibition is based on an old and once-healthy principle to avoid any discrimination in a country where “assimilation” is the rule. Assimilation, French-style, means that any foreigner who wants to live in the country has to copy the behavioral code of local population and marry a native quickly. This assimilation model worked perfectly for people of Spanish, Portuguese or Polish descent. But with Arabs and Muslims, it stopped.

Now, however, despite all good intentions, the rule prohibiting collection of data that might lead to discrimination, has become a national security handicap.